Payback: Debt and The Shadow Side of Wealth - Critical Response

Critical Response

she is advancing ... claim that economic activities involving borrowing and lending are metaphorical extensions of an underlying human sense of indebtedness. Beliefs about debt are not shadows cast by processes of market exchange. They are presupposed throughout much of human activity. Economic life invokes a sense of order in human affairs, widely dispersed throughout society. John N. Gray, The New York Review of Books

Critics found the book well-researched and thought-provoking. Reviewers enjoyed Atwood's humour and conversational writing. The style was described as "eclectic", a "literary walkabout", and "anecdotally rich". Novelist David Liss wrote that the book was "delightfully engaging, smart, funny, clever". Canadian writer Charles Foran called the book "serious adult fun" that "displays some of the energy of a lively dinner party, one replete with anecdotes and opinions, witticisms and barbs". The book's most entertaining parts are discussions on non-monetary debts and debts portrayed in literature. Regarding the speeches, the reviewer for The Montreal Gazette wrote: "Her delivery, as usual, was smooth, relentlessly paced, but with precise pauses for the frequent, much-appreciated laugh lines." John N. Gray, in The New York Review of Books, wrote that "Atwood has combined rigorous analysis, wide-ranging erudition, and a beguilingly playful imagination". The Library Journal recommended the book for all libraries.

Negative reviews came from Salon.com and The Scotsman. Louis Bayard of Salon.com disagreed with the delivery of the final chapter, on ecological debt, writing that Atwood "forsakes artistic engagement for ideological reflex". William Skidelsky in The Guardian agreed that the chapter was "by no means the highlight of the book". Allan Massie, reviewing for The Scotsman, could not find a coherent argument being presented and found her writing style "veering uncomfortably between the academic and the jokily colloquial, tiresome, some of her writing is pretentious, much obvious and platitudinous". The reviewers in Salon.com and The Scotsman, as well as The Economist, were all uncomfortable with Atwood not distinguishing or contrasting 'good' and 'bad' debt.